Press Release for 9 Jul 2012
Stairways Software releases Keyboard Maestro 5.3.1
Perth, Western Australia - 9 July 2012 - Stairways Software Pty Ltd is pleased to announce Keyboard Maestro 5.3.1, the new version of its powerful productivity enhancer for Mac OS X.
Version 5.3.1 resolves a number of minor issues, including an issue with executing Automator Workflows on Mountain Lion, some performance issues, and a few edge cases.
Version 5.3 adds a bunch of new Image manipulation actions, significantly enhanced the mouse click action, and more.
Keyboard Maestro 5 adds control flow such as While loops, For loops and If/Then/Else statements, as well as permanently stored variables and a complete calculation engine, all within the same familiar user interface.
Version 5 also includes an extensible library of pre-made macros, with a large variety of macros for you to build upon. Also new is Undo/Redo support and revisions so you can try out new macros with confidence.
Using Keyboard Maestro's powerful macros, you can control applications, windows, or menus; insert text; open documents, applications or URLs; execute scripts; control the system, iTunes or QuickTime Player; and more - all with the touch of a key, click of the mouse, periodically or at specific times, when an application is launched or running, or even over the Internet using Keyboard Maestro Control on your iPhone or iPod touch, or by using a web browser to access Keyboard Maestro's built-in web server.
Using Keyboard Maestro's Program Switcher and Window Switcher you can cycle through applications or windows, closing, hiding, launching, and more. Keyboard Maestro can help you regain control of your crowded screen by letting you close or hide multiple windows or applications.
Using Keyboard Maestro's Application Switcher and Window Switcher you can cycle through applications or windows, closing, hiding, launching, and more. Using Keyboard Maestro's Application Launcher, you can quickly launch applications. Keyboard Maestro can help you regain control of your crowded screen by letting you close or hide multiple windows or applications.
Using Keyboard Maestro's Clipboard History Switcher, you can access previous clipboards, so you will never lose your clipboard again. It also makes it easy to copy and paste multiple items such as username and password or serial number without having to switch back and forth between applications for each item. You can mark a clipboard as a favorite so it stays forever, or send it to another Mac running Keyboard Maestro.
Using Keyboard Maestro's Clipboard Switcher, you can select from a number of named clipboards, storing information away for later retrieval, or store the details you are working on and access them by name again and again.
Changes for 5.3.1
- Resolved an issue with executing Automator Workflows in Mountain Lion.
- Resolved a performance issue with the Button Condition.
- Notify via Growl when a timeout cancels a macro.
- Fixed some memory leaks.
- Fixed the SECONDS() function.
- Fixed a performance issue with getting the Finder's selection.
- Fixed the YEAR/MONTH/DAY/DOW/HOUR/MINUTE/SECOND to be in local timezone.
- Fixed some edge cases in the Hard Wrap filter.
- Allow "APPLICATION" in the menu condition.
- Avoid "no autorelease pool" warnings on launch of engine in Mac App Store version.
- Removed "move to" logging.
- Fixed Edit with TextEdit macro library entry.
- Fixed short form variables with spaces or underscores in their names.
- Fixed triple click action editor to actually triple click.
- Fixed a case where the editor get confused when switching macros.
Changes for 5.3
- Enhanced Mouse Click action:
- Added support for mouse drag.
- Click relative to a found image on the screen.
- Click relative to the center of the window/screen/image.
- Double and triple click.
- Right click (and center button and other buttons).
- New Screen Capture action captures one or all screens or a selected window.
- New Image actions:
- Create New Image.
- Flip image.
- Rotate image.
- Resize Image (Resize image, resize canvas, add or remove margins, crop).
- Composite (images or styled text) onto Image.
- Draw Shape (line, rectangle or oval) onto Image.
- Trim Image.
- Display Clipboard (image or styled text).
- Get Image Size.
- Find Image on Screen.
- New Screen Contains Image condition.
- New Highlight Location action.
- Allow "APPLICATION" in select menu as an alias for the application name.
- Process text tokens in the Clipboard, Script, and Path condition tests.
- Added selectedMacros AppleScript command.
- Added live reporting of the results of condition tests in action editors.
- Allow short form variable tokens (%var%).
- Added MidX and MidY to the SCREEN & WINDOW functions.
- Fixed some edge cases in the Unwrap text filter.
- Fixed the Tutorial.
- Fixed a bug where selecting the Variable in the Search and Replace Variable action did not stick.
- Removed the five second delay in displaying applications/utilities.
- Fixed the %WindowPosition%n% token
- Corrected non-edit display of File collection recursive status.
- Fixed a bug that caused expressions with commas to fail in some calculation fields.
Changes for 5.2
- Compatibility Note: Tokens being parsed in some actions may mean single percents now need to be doubled (%%)
- Compatibility Note: Tokens now parse for \x characters, so the backslash may need to be doubled (\\)
- New File actions.
- Many new filters.
- Many new tokens.
- Many new calculation functions.
and more.
Changes for 5.1
- Added For Each action allowing looping over a variety of collections.
- Added Developer ID Signing for Mountain Lion Gatekeeper.
and more.
Major Changes for 5.0:
- Requires 10.6 and Intel.
- Control Flow - Pause Until, If/Then/Else, While, Until, Repeat with extensive conditional tests.
- Variables - permanently stored and accessible in a variety of ways.
- Calculations - based on variables or a variety of functions.
- Library of pre-built macros.
- Undo/Redo - finally!
- Enhanced Application Switcher with Cover Flow, Force Quit, Get Info, Reveal.
- Enhanced Window Switcher with Cover Flow of Applications, window depth sorting.
- Enhanced Clipboard History with Favorites, Quick Look, Send clipboards to another Mac.
- Application Launcher as first seen in Switcher Maestro.
Control Flow & Variables & Calculations
- New Control Flow actions Pause Until, If/Then/Else, While, Until, Repeat.
- Extensive conditional tests (Application, Window, Menu, Button, Modifiers, and many more).
- Permanently stored variables containing text, or arrays of numbers.
- Prompt For User Input action with text, passwords, popup menus and checkboxes.
- Most action fields can contain calculations (eg Pause 60*Time in Minutes).
- Set Variable to Text action with tokens.
- Set Variable to Calculation action with array access.
- Search & Replace Variable action with regex and tokens.
- Use Variable action to adjust mouse, windows, applications, and more.
- Filter Variable action.
Enhanced Clipboards
- Added Quick Look to Clipboard History and Named Clipboard Switchers.
- Added Favorites to Clipboard History.
- Send clipboards to other Macs.
- Delete Past Clipboard action.
- Search & Replace Clipboard action with regex and tokens.
General Improvements
- Favorites category in action list.
- Configurable timeouts for individual actions.
- Macro Revisions.
- Applications listed in Status Menu.
- Use regular expressions in menu or button name matching by prefixing with ^.
- Typed String triggers can ignore case, or remember case.
- Insert Text actions honour case of remember case typed string triggers.
- Allow triggering on "any" application activates, launches or quits.
New and Improved Actions
- Set Macro Enable action.
- Speak Text action.
- Play Sound action.
- Action to display text.
- Action to Show/Hide the global macros palette action.
- Manipulate window action can now operate on window with index N.
- Manipulate window action can now center a window at any point.
- Generalized Search Web action to allow any URL.
- Add Relaunch & Force Quit options to Quit action.
- Added "Current Application" option to Quit action.
- Open Finder Selection action optionally with a specific application.
- Add "with specific application" to Open File or Folder action.
- Add "with specific application" to Open URL action.
- Growl action uses our own HUD window if Growl is not available.
New Text Tokens
- Token for variables.
- Token for Named Clipboards.
- Tokens for Current Track name, album, artist, ratingstars, etc.
- Tokens for Current Application, Current Mouse, and Front Window details.
- Tokens for Screen Frame and System Volume.
- Tokens for Address Book Name, Email, etc.
- Tokens for Executing Macro and Macro Group name.
Enhanced Scripting
- Variables can be accessed or written via AppleScript
- Variables are available to Shell Scripts.
- Execute Script can store results in a variable.
- Support for AppleScript command to calculate expressions.
- Support for AppleScript command to process tokens.
- AppleScript command to reload the engine macros.
- AppleScript command to play sound.
Enhanced Application & Window Switcher & Application Launcher
- Added new Application Launcher.
- Applications listed in Status Menu (Running, Recent, Applications, Utilities).
- Added Force Quit (k twice).
- Added Get Info (i).
- Added Reveal in Finder (r).
- Added Relaunch (l). Eg k k l Force Quit & Relaunch.
- New icon badges.
- Mouse Rollover limited to when you change icons.
- Popup contextual menu in Application Switcher & Window Switcher.
- Option to disable mouse rollover in Application Switcher & Window Switcher.
- Control the opacity of Application Switcher & Window Switcher.
- Option to have Window Switcher sort by window depth.
- Allow switching through applications in Window Switcher.
- Added Cover Flow style to Application Switcher.
- Changed to using an alpha colour, removed the alpha slider, and honour the brightness.
In Detail for 5.0:
- Command-Option-Control-Shift-Click on Status Menu icon to cancel all macros.
- Support org.nspasteboard.TransientType (et al) and have the clipboard history ignore them.
- Support org.nspasteboard.AutoGeneratedType for Insert Text by Pasting.
- Up/Down arrow move clipboard selection when clipboard switcher search field is selected.
- Command-W closes palettes.
- The Recording window preserves its location.
- Import menu is properly grayed out only when it should be.
- Removed Key Repeat preference from Application/Window Switcher.
- Multiple Quick Macros would conflict because UIDs were not unique.
- Searching for Cut, Copy or Paste in the Action list would not find the actions.
- Allow the number pad keys to select duplicate macros from the duplicate macro palette.
- and more ...
Keyboard Maestro 5.x requires Mac OS X 10.6 or greater, including 10.7 Lion, and an Intel Mac, and is native 32 and 64 bit.
Keyboard Maestro is engineered by Stairways Software Pty Ltd and distributed by FastSpring. Keyboard Maestro is licensed on a per user basis, and an individual user can use it on five Macs.
New customers can purchase Keyboard Maestro from <http://purchase.keyboardmaestro.com/> for US$36.
Keyboard Maestro 5.0 is a paid upgrade from previous versions. Customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro from us after 1 March 2011 have been issued a free upgrade to Keyboard Maestro 5. If you have not received your free license, you can claim your free upgrade by looking up your previous Keyboard Maestro purchase at <http://enquiry.stairways.com/>.
Customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro prior to version 5.0 can upgrade to Keyboard Maestro 5 for US$25. Customers can find details on upgrading by looking up your previous Keyboard Maestro purchase at <http://enquiry.stairways.com/>.
Keyboard Maestro is available on the Mac App Store. Customers who purchased Keyboard Maestro from the Mac App Store will receive a free upgrade to this version. Please note that Keyboard Maestro is not, and probably cannot, be sandboxed, and Apple now requires sandboxing for any feature updates on the Mac App Store, so Keyboard Maestro will not be able to be significantly updated on the Mac App Store past 5.3.x.
It is possible to transfer your license from the Mac App Store version to a direct download license - contact us for details.
A fully-functional unlicensed trial version of Keyboard Maestro can be downloaded from <http://download.stairways.com/>.
For sales enquires, volume purchases, customer service, technical support, or to contact project management, our current contact information is listed at <http://contact.stairways.com/>.
Extensive online documentation on Keyboard Maestro can be found at <http://documentation.keyboardmaestro.com/>.
A brief taste of Keyboard Maestro in action can be found at <http://screenshots.keyboardmaestro.com/>.
A more detailed tour to give you a better idea of Keyboard Maestro's power and versatility is available at <http://tour.keyboardmaestro.com/>.
Video examples and tutorials of Keyboard Maestro can be found at <http://movies.keyboardmaestro.com/>.
For more information about anything to do with Keyboard Maestro visit <http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/>.
Previous Press Release Next Press Release
